Thursday, August 26, 2010

This is a public service announcement (and also a helping-ChiZine-deal-with-sloppy-tweeting announcement).

ChiZine Publications, the publisher of my story collection Monstrous Affections and my forthcoming novel Eutopia, is doing just fine. So's their parent webzine, ChiZine. You wouldn't know it if you were a-Twitter today, when a fiendbastard sloppy Twitterer posted a note that ChiZine is shutting down. Perhaps it is an honest mistake - earlier this month, Dorchester Publishing let go Don D'Auria, the editor responsible for the Leisure Horror line, and announced they're going into print-on-demand and ebooks. Many presume this means that's it for Dorchester, which has in the past sponsored ChiZine. So presumably, said twitterer thought that might be it for ChiZine the webzine, and further surmised that CZP is also in the toilet.

Don't believe me? Here's what CZP posted on their website, which you can link to here:

A Note From the Publishers of CZP

Recently, Leisure Books, due to financial difficulties, had to cease its sponsorship of ChiZine.com. There is a note up on ChiZine.com explaining the details, but this has no effect on ChiZine Publications. The sponsorship agreement never covered CZP, and CZP never had any business relationship with Leisure—we're not an imprint or subsidiary; we are a privately held company. Rumours we are going out of business or in financial trouble are completely false. If anything, based on advance numbers for our Fall books, we're doing better than ever. Don't miss our October 22nd Toronto Fall launch! —Brett & Sandra, Co-Publishers

And that might have been it. But this past weekend, on the way through Burks Falls from Temagami, we stopped at dad's place -- where he had pretty much finished making drawings and oil paintings and watercolours of what has become known as the Hell Skull 2.* So we brought it home.

And now, all is right on Heaven, Earth and the Other Place.

* Yes. It is a bison skull. Bison are not minions of Hell, but rather agreeable big herbivores who are harder to come by than they once were. Play along, yard apes.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

It's been a week since we drove up to Sudbury to take part in Words in the Wilderness' maiden voyage - and at last, we have downloaded photos. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to sing the praises of the little literary festival that will hopefully become a regular thing in years to come.

It will have finished up now - events were taking place all last week - but the big day for horror fiction was Sunday. That's when local author Sean Costello stepped up at the Creative Spark gallery to talk about his new novel - then Gord Rollo, Ken Lillie-Paetz, Rob Sacchetto and I waxed horrific for two solid hours about horror fiction and us. The audience was small but enthusiastic. I think they liked us - everybody sold a lot of books - and I certainly liked them.

The organizers, primarily in the persons of Ken Lillie Paetz and his wife Jenn, treated Karen and I like the royalty we aren't, putting us up in luxurious digs at the Best Western Sudbury and treating us to a very fine Sudbury Saturday night on the town (if you're in town, have some pizza at Respect is Burning, and try the terrienes at the Fromagerie). The mayor of Sudbury didn't show for us, but he was there the day before we arrived, to kick off the festivities. Hopefully we'll meet up next year, for the second annual Words in the Wilderness festival.

Here are some pictures, courtesy of Karen Fernandez:

At top, Ken, Rob, me and Gord get started on the stories of our own unique acquisition of the horror jones; the conversation continues; I read; and so does Gord Rollo. The audience listens intently.

Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

Click here for Hygiene

Click on the face to learn the truth

The Devil's Exercise Yard

This is the blog portion of my website, The Devil's Exercise Yard. It does all the things you've come to expect from blogs - although it won't be telling you what I'm eating, my mood, or whether my shirt needs laundering. Very occasionally, it may offer some insight to something you haven't thought about, or some update of news you haven't heard before. So keep checking it. Be obsessive. Give in to your inner web stalker. Click and click and click. It's the only way you'll be sure not to miss anything.

About Me

From the website:
I'm David Nickle, and I write stories. Most of them are what you'd call horror stories. But in the mix are science fiction, fantasy, and some stories that are just stories. Not one of them is true. I've had some of them published, in places like The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, the Northern Frights series, the Queer Fear series, Cemetery Dance, On Spec, and a whole bunch others. I've only got one novel out (The Claus Effect, with Karl Schroeder), and a story collection, Monstrous Affections (all on my own) - but I'm working on adding some more to the list.
From the blog:
I'm also a journalist. I write for the Toronto Community News group of community newspapers in Toronto, covering municipal politics in the big city. It's a good gig. But I blog about city politics for the paper, so you probably won't hear much about that sort of thing here.
Need to get in touch? Email me at davidnickle(at)gmail(dot)com.